Opening windows: open source software and the future of business

In a business world increasingly dependent upon integrated technology, rapid innovation and global competition, open-source software is shaping up as one of the most significant drivers of change entering the new millennium. Open-source software is characterised by the public availability of its underpinning source code - the units that software is written in. Thus, in stark contrast with the highly protected codes of commercial or proprietary software, open-source software can be accessed and used by anyone at no cost. Its power is not just to be found in its availability, however. What makes open-source software a future-maker are the virtual communities that embrace it, downloading source codes from the Internet, adapting, improving and uploading them again for others to utilise. The result of this process is innovation with a speed and utility wildly faster than commercial companies can match. (von Krogh 2003) From Linux, the operating system named after its chief developer, at the time a Finnish university student, to the Apache web-server software that is the backbone of the Internet, in some areas of application open-source software is more prevalent than its commercial equivalent.